1. Start out with unreasonable expectations. It's easy to find a 2BR apartment with parking in Greenwich Village for $350 a month, right ? Everyone gets something for nothing.

2. When considering an apartment, believe everything you hear, especially oral promises made to you by a broker. Don't bother to check out or verify anything yourself. Heck, that's for other people to do.

3. Always pay a deposit on an apartment that you are not sure about, especially the last one you see after a long day of looking at many apartments. If you later change your mind it will be no problem to get it back, right ?

4. When it comes time to sign the lease, don't bother reading it ... just sign it. Just a bunch of legalese anyways, give it a quick gloss-over and sign your name to it.

5. Once you move into the apartment, invite everyone you know over, crank up the stereo, and throw a huge party. Never mind your neighbors. If they complain about noise that just shows they are prudes with no life.

6. Take on some roommates or friends to live with you. Don't bother checking with your lease or your landlord when doing this. And especially don't bother making any sort of written agreement amongst roommates. No need to consider what happens when someone moves out or who does what chores around the place. You're all friends, what could possibly go wrong ?

7. Always escalate any problem or dispute into a big deal. This is New York, so give them some attitude. Yelling at, screaming, or insulting your super or landlord are great ways of establishing yourself and getting things accomplished around your apartment.

8. When your lease is up, don't ask for a renewal. Just stay month to month forever.

9. If after living there a while, you think your building is not as good as others are, or that your rent is too high or lease too restrictive, don't even consider looking around for someplace else. Instead, just come to Tenant.Net and complain.

10. When its time to move out, don't bother giving your landlord any notice of your departure. Just leave any junk there too. You'll get your security deposit back.

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Believe it or not, each of these items has been brought up on the tenant.net forum. Sometimes seeing what NOT to do makes it clearer what you should do. At the least, it makes it easier to avoid the worst mistakes.